78 posts tagged “fiscally prude”

Greetings from the Southwest Airlines terminal at the Seattle Tacoma International Airport.

I arrived ludicrously early to the airport this morning – as in, two and a half hours early. Bag check and security was negotiated within 20 minutes, and so I headed to Anthony’s for a drink. (I don’t like to fly).

Alas, the rumors of free WiFi via Google were grossly overstated: instead of starting on the 9th, it is now delayed and starting on Monday the 18th. This being the 13th, it does nothing for me, and I do not wish to spend $8 for AT&T Wireless for 2 hours.  I’ve spent the last hour or so trying to scrape some free Ethernets from the nearby “hoity toity” clubs (British Air, Delta) to no avail until now.

Why would I pay for in-flight WiFi and not for terminal WiFi? Well, yours truly is on a stop flight (non plane-changing) from Seattle to Las Vegas by way of… wait for it… Salt Lake City. I will be on a plane exactly twice as long as I need to be to save spending twice as much on a ticket. Ergo, my $8 for a realistic 2hrs of WiFi in the terminal would stretch longer on nearly four hours of flight.  (Oh, wait, it looks like I’ve just acquired a signal from British Air… with 40 minutes before boarding, awesome!)

Not that I expect to penny-pinch this trip, on the contrary: I’m trying to save on little things because I know in my heart of hearts I will be very bad this weekend. There has been discussion of custom face makeup application and fancy dress and fancier restaurants; of coercing concierges for favors. But the house taxes are paid and the savings account is getting better, I think I will be ok. Thanks to a work hookup, we are staying at THEHotel at Mandalay Bay (as much as my spell check does not like the way that is spelled, that is how it is spelled).  I have brought my running gear, which should hopefully offset all of the gastric and alcoholic excess.  Or, it will sit untouched in my bag while I, and my two cohorts, galavant.

Pursuant to this trip I spent yesterday in a frenzy of tying up work loose ends, obsessive cleaning, hair-cutting-and-coloring (I didn’t do it myself, which is why it turned out well), and general whack-a-mole-ing. I was, in effect, earning my time to Quark’s Bar. 

Which is not to be: while trying to find a link for the infamous “Warp Core Breach” I have discovered that the Star Trek Experience at the Las Vegas Hilton is no more! Curses! It is set to reopen at the Neonopolis Mall… in 2010.

I am at a loss for words. That was one of my favorite things about Vegas, it was literally a required stop from the time it opened. The last time I went I dragged some six members of a bridal party to go feel Ferengi ears. Yes, I am a geek; but dammit, man! Dry ice in a fishbowl with 7 shots of Rum is nothing to sneer at!

Oh, sure, I can acquire foot-long margaritas and make do. I suppose there is some new/shiny/better gimmicky thing in Vegas – for that is what Vegas does best – but I really think it’s unfair they didn’t consult me. That they are coming up with a new/shiny/better one Next Year is beside the point, I haven’t booked that trip yet.

Take off is in 50 minutes.  Next post courtesy of SWA WiFi… maybe…

Well, folks, move along, nothing to see here; the Recession is over. We still have a weak jobs market and your credit report will take a while to recover from things like random card companies closing accounts you haven't used in years (ahem!), but still. It's over, and it's time to get down with our 1980's envisaged consumerist selves and buy some Hello Kitty underwear.

Or not.

The comforting trend is that Americans, such as that generalization is, are saving again. They are also being cost conscious, yours truly included.

I've been reading about this collective cost consciousness, online and in books from that nifty place called The Library. The most recent reads were The Millionaire Next Door and Millionaire Women Next Door, which is the same book but one has a girlish font. Seriously. Both books seem to be entirely developed from the same bolt of fabric, the common thread being this:

Live within your means.

Pretty simple, huh? Everyone thinks that they live within their means, but "means" and "within" are nice stretchy words. For example, you can make $60,000 a year and spend $55,000, and you are living within your means. Your personal savings rate, then, is about 8 percent. You can make $60,000 a year and spend $59,000 and you are living within your means. That would mean a 1.7% savings rate. Or you can make $60,000 a year and attempt to live on $40,000, in which case your saving rate is 33%. All are technically "within your means", but the differences in application are drastic.

A lot of the advice online ranges from the 'heard it before' to the 'truly creative'. Examples of 'heard it before' include things like don't purchase fancy coffee, use your IRS.gov withholding calculator, minimize dining out. 'Truly creative' includes having exclusively pot-luck dinner parties, setting a budget on an expense (like groceries) and forcing yourself to live within it (so if you do in fact have to eat tuna out of the can that has sat in the back of your pantry since 2002 then so be it).

Some advice is more concrete: the book I read suggested that you shouldn't purchase a home whose price tag is more than twice your annual salary (I... so utterly failed there). They admonish new-car purchases or keeping up with Joneses. Some offer strategies for creative coupon clipping which results in $15 grocery store trips (which you only do twice a month)  (I suspect these people are surviving on bean and rice burritos with the occasional aforementioned tuna tin). They all follow the same basic advice, though, which is to Pay Yourself First.

With all this newfound fiscal conservativism, then, it is no surprise that we are increasingly inundated with red-and-white Sale signs. Merchants are all the more incentivized to sell us Something, Anything, at far smaller margins than they were used to. As if galvanized by the newfound social acceptability of coupon clipping and bargain hunting, we review what’s on sale; we scrutinize the per unit labeling; we lightly boast of our discount finds. Everywhere; the sale signs are pervasive and vary only in the number and size of exclamation points.

I’m seeing them in places I hardly expect to, like in Gene Juarez. Gene Juarez, the home of the minimum $50 haircut with the product up-sell at the end, is having a product sale and has been having their most expensive stylists reduce rates on certain days. I got free foundation, with my reduced-price haircut. (Note: haircut was last month; they didn’t have the “foundation blender” person there so they credited it to my account and I rescheduled at my convenience. Which was today.) I did actually buy something at Gene Juarez today with my free foundation. I got a concealer compact. I did not, however, spring the extra $12.50 for the special brush.

I know I can get one at a discount art supply store for $5.

...Must come to an end. Today is our last day in Waikiki, and it was an even better trip than I thought. I was worried about expense and boredom, the two things that can cause a vacation to suck; neither happened. True, Waikiki is expensive -- but so is Bellevue. Beer is about the same price and is brought by Kevin or Angela, the two people who have been poolside attendants for me. My credit with them is apparently stellar, because yesterday after two (2!) Blue Hawaiis, I forgot to pay my bill when we went up to the room. Kevin paid it out of his pocket, because he knew he'd see me today. Kevin got a nice tip for that. (NB: apparently my credit is good with the bartenders, too. I have seen other people get "Blue Hawaii's" that were green -- mine are crystal blue and if there's any pineapple juice I haven't yet been able to taste it).

When we first got here, I kept a watchful eye on the C, a chair right next to the pool, to be there to do the heroic mom thing in case he got in over his head (the shallow end is 5' -- the deep is 9'). As of today I'm four rows back in the blissfull, non-burning shade. This is because in the 7 days we have been here he has improved his swimming skills exponentially, making friends and cannonballs alike. Also, I am amazingly burnt all over; and my purple bikini is showing off the delicate shades of red and fuscia that mark the exposed skin.

Why are we consistently at the pool? Several reasons, none the least of which is that the C prefers the pool to the beach. This is because the beach is crowded, noisy, and offers very little shade. You compete for swim space with surfers, catamarans, and boogyboards; the pool is saltwater, exclusive, crystaline, and offers a choice of 3 hot tubs. Plus, they bring food and drinks, which has been a novelty to the C. We've had lunch poolside pretty much every single day, which you would think is expensive; but it has been less so than going in to town for lunch (the one day we did that).

I will be glad when we are home and I am able to do some cooking, though. Eating out 24/7 is nice in terms of not having dishes to do or menu planning or wondering if you have enough milk to make BOTH lattes and pancakes. But it is hard on the system in terms of watching what you eat (I haven't run in 10 days) and I'm trying to be good. Fortunately, Hawaii offers many opportunities to be "good" and also explore: we've had teppanyaki (not benihana, much better), sushi, italian, "true" hawaiian, pub, luau, and steakhouse dinners here, the C trying everything and anything. We have discovered he doesn't like macadamia nuts (and good thing, too, the smell makes me want to retch), he loves pineapple, and he's ambivalent on papaya. He will eat the shrimp head with his mom, and likes squid.

I would go on and on about the wonderful relaxation this has given me, and how I will miss it but be glad to be home, and how this was the perfect amount of days... but...

my computer battery is dying. And I hear the boychild calling me from the pool. *splash*

I have never been to a time share presentation. I never wanted to; the very tactics employed in the Cabo San Lucas airport are those that have given me an aversion to time shares. But I'm here in Waikiki, and they are low pressure, and I was given a free breakfast plus $100 locally spendable dollars for 2 hours of my time. This is more than I make at home, so I said "yes". Now, to be fair: I disclosed that I was SINGLE, that I was/am a SINGLE MOM, and that I work for the largest online retailer of travel in the world. This should've disqualified me on a few levels but apparently it didn't; the C and I acquired our complimentary shell necklaces and our breakfast vouchers.

I sat through a presentation for 2 hours while the boychild watched "Madagascar", interrupted only when we did a walk-through of a sample unit.

I will say this: I was DANGEROUSLY close to buying in. I admit it. For $14k I could've owned a share, deeded and willable, of  Hawaiian paradise. It would've paid my lodging for the rest of my life for anywhere this hotel chain operated worldwide, for 2+ weeks per year (depending on where/when I used my "points"). If you're going to own a place to trade, Waikiki is the place. So... why did I not do it?

1. 14k is a lot of money, and I'd've either had to leverage or sell off some stuff I'd rather not sell.
2. Leveraging costs money. Saving gives money.
3. I felt at the end like I was giving in.

That last one did a lot more than the others to convince me *not* to. The sales lady was nice, she didn't pressure me, and she was cool. They were going to comp me a trip to mexico, for a week, destination of choice. They were going to give me 90-days-same-as-cash. They really wanted the "C" (she used his name) to have a time share. And when she did that, I knew I was being played.

I got my free breakfast, and my $100 in vouchers. A base-line luau costs X, and a massively deluxe one costs X plus $100-- so I got us 2 tickets to the deluxe variety. I think we earned it. And I'm never going on one of those again: not because it was bad, but because it wasn't.

On the flight from Seattle Tacoma to Honolulu I read James Michener's Hawaii. This book is 1130 pages thick, and I read it in 5 hours; the flight was uneventful to the point where I only accepted the complimentary mai tai because it was, well, complimentary. When we landed, then, I had no book... for the whole trip.

Within the first hour at the hotel I acquired a book that was truth-vs-fiction about James Michener's Hawaii, or at least a hefty portion of it. It was along the lines of "In James Michener's book, XYZ missionaries did ABC; in Real Life, ZYX missionaries did CBA". Charming, educational, and a brief (2hr) read. I am therefore still bookless.

Not that this trip has been boring; it's been quite relaxing. Up each morning at 6am (9am home time) and asleep by 8 (11pm home time), I've spent enough pool time to be burnt significantly in all of the places one wants tan. It is a ginger expedition to sit on a toilet seat, to put on a bra (oh... my), and to button my pants (despite fairly healthy eating habits).

We visited the Waikiki Aquarium, which is cheap ($10 for the boychild and I) and fascinating (some 60+ exhibits plus those little interactive wand-thingies, plus a touchie-feelie aquarium); we've signed up for a timeshare presentation (a self-avowed no-pressure one; if they can do the math to make themselves truly cheaper than my math -- and my BTCo discount -- and somehow fit into my budget (hello, Student Loans!)) which means we get free breakfast tomorrow and $100 in gimme-gimmies (likely to be turned into luau credit).

Meanwhile, we've taken some pictures...

This weekend I had the opportunity to go to a car show. It wasn't my dad's car show. It was a show of Porsches and Ferraris and the errant Lamborghini and Lotus species. There was easily $5 million in cars displayed at Remlingers, and I know one thing for very certain: I will never ever own one.

It's not so much that I'll never collect the apparent $50k "entrance fee" to purchase a respectable entry. I suspect I should, if I want to retire, for example. But I don't know that I'd have the $50k "extra" that that would represent, and if I did that I would spend it on a car. Or a horse, for that matter. Both are shiny, both are pretty, both give you something to do and talk about. You can hang with that crowd and have the appropriate accoutrements.

Horse poo and auto maintenance/insurance are enough to deter me.

They are both, however, quite nice to look at.

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In statistics classes the first day or so is usually belaboring the difference between accuracy and precision. They denote the difference using a common example: a dartboard or shooting target.

Precision is typically exemplified by a very tight grouping off in a corner of the target, far from center. Accuracy is usually seen as a loose grouping, all around and in the center. Therefore, if you had a tight grouping in the center you'd be precisely accurate. It also means that if you are precise you have good control but if you are accurate you have good aim.

I would say my current budgeting capabilities are a little more precise than they are accurate, however, especially with respect to my Target. I walked in the other day with intent of getting some durable goods (you know, laundry soap, dish soap, mattress protectors, etc.) and ended up purchasing a this and that and other thing; I departed poorer by just shy of a C-note. To be precise, I departed $96.52. I am now the proud owner, for example, of shower floor anti-slip pads that look like clear pebbles.

I also freely admit (have I mentioned that this blog is my confessional of sorts?) that I have purchased coffee more often than I should have, and that despite the fact that yesterday's coffee was free -- I put a witty quote up and won a free coffee -- it doesn't make up for the one I had this morning (with a doughnut!). Yet I am the same person who crowed with delight in the supermarket last weekend because I saved $1.50 on yogurt, and came in $28 underbudget in groceries for the period.

Apparently, then, I  just need to work on my aim.

I have a bodybugg. It is a cute black armband that makes me feel like I'm doing something about my personal fitness and weight. Or rather, that is what it is supposed to do.

Mostly of late I'm disenchanted with it.

What it has done in its first three months was allow me to figure out just how much I can consume against what I expend on a given day, and how much I expend when I do things like run or garden or sleep. For the first three months, this was all very fascinating and I relished the metrics and graphs.

I'm relishing less now. It's becoming tedious to enter in every food product I consume; there are outages on a regular basis that require me to remember both quantity and quality and type and volume of foodstuffs consumed for sometimes up to two days; it does a good job of making me feel guilty during a period of my life where that is a given. Further, and perhaps more to the point, now that I know what I can "get away with", I've largely maintained my weight (actually lost and gained and lost 5lbs on it). None of those pounds was a surprise in either direction, you already know, for example, when you eat two bowls of tortilla soup and have a piece of apple pie and so forth that the next morning the scale is not going to befriend you.

My subscription is up mid-July and I will be selling my little bug; hopefully someone else can learn and grow and metricise their miscellaneous mastication. Just as I've stopped logging my runs on Map My Run, it doesn't mean I've stopped running: I ran five miles today.

It's been a while since I obsessed about the fiscal side of things, so let's do some of that.

I was a bad, bad, bad girl last month. I bought nightstands, a mattress pad, a pedicure, some clothes, and a garbage disposal (Well, technically I got the GD this weekend but still --- bad!). One can argue as to the longevity of these items and how each were researched only a couple of things were impulse buys, but the fact of the matter remains is my March budget remains in tatters. Tatters!

Therefore today I am back on my Being Good Again bent, and that means menu planning and grocery ninja-ing. This is the usually fun enterprise of meal-planning for a 2 week period, breaking it up into 2 distinct shopping trips, and then attempting (oh, the attempt) to stay away from the grocery store (and fresh.amazon.com) for that period. The additional bonus is that it's done primarily in Excel, which is my favorite program to play in. If I were to come back as a program it would be Excel, because I am the Excel ninja, and can hide amongst the cells in various abstruse formulas.

All fun aside, this also means I am going to, yet again, attempt to make bread. My bread attempts thus far have been mixed, at best. I suspect it is because I am not satisfied with a wet dough or a long rise time, and I suspect I am going to just have to get over it. Two weeks (or more) back I was listening to NPR and they had an author of a bread book talking about how there are these miraculous "no knead" breads and how time saving they were... except that they typically involve a really long, tortuously slow rise time. "Quick Rise" yeast does nothing to keep me from fidgeting. In the end I have a feeling that the cost and time I put into making bread will be more "expensive" than if I just bought the damn bread, but there is something psychological about this and I'll be content to run on my little wheel for a bit longer.

I have also determined I am getting Dish... I just haven't got around to it. What does it say when 70% of my drive to get Dish is to get my parents the coupon? Maybe I shouldn't get dish and get someone else's coupon for them. Then again, the new person sign-on is a pretty good deal as-is.

Things that will potentially impact my new Being Good Drive:

• Negative Impact
• Patio Furniture
• Home Improvements (one begets another)
• Garden Plant Lust
• A Disneyland Trip in Summer (here's hoping my IATA rates hold)
• Positive Impact
• No drinking = $ saved on wine
• Menu planning
• My chiro visits have been reduced from 2x/wk to 1x/wk
• Boy's last school payment is in June
• Unknown Impact
• We're starting an investment club at work
• I'm starting a container herb and veggie garden
• Farmers markets

Ready...Steady...Go!

Today I supported KUOW, my local favorite NPR station. At first it was a dire tie between KPLU and KUOW, but over the years I've come to appreciate less Jazz and more news. Plus the "Weekday" show. 

Naturally, if I had my absolute everything I want in a radio station, it would be KUOW and then remove some of the drier bits of news and the random jazz sections and replace it with alternative rock. Maybe KEXP and KUOW should get together.

But as radio is simpler than TV, my radio needs are simpler than my TV ones. I've been Cable-less now for about 7 months, and I'm beginning to miss my KCTS and my Discovery Channel and my Food TV. But I don't miss the shopping channels (why are there more than one?), the religion channels (why are there more than one?), and the sports channels (why are there more than one? -- wait, I can see that). I do not miss the collection of Lifetime/We/Oxygen and the Meredith Baxter Byrney gets beat up/loses her child/faces cancer/fights the system movie of the week.

If I had "DD's Very Own Television Service" it would consist of very few channels:

• Public Broadcasting: Nature. The Quilting Show. (I am not kidding)
• Discovery Channel: Mythbusters. Dirty Jobs.
• Food TV: Alton Brown. Iron Chef.
• HGTV: I'm in danger of running out of house projects.
• Either TCM or TNT: they're usually good for a glut of Bond Movies sometime in April and they're the ones who play Groundhog Day incessantly on Feb 2; A Christmas Story incessantly on Dec 25; and Weekend at Bernies for no particular reason.
• Some channel that I can get Taxi, M*A*S*H, and old Friends reruns on
• Some channel that keeps the C supplied with Jimmy Neutron

But I can't get that. The very closest I can get is either going back to Dish and getting something like 100+ channels for the bargain price of $9.99 per month (and then $45 per month after the first six months, with a 2 year committment. Or I could go ComCastic and get 75 channels for $29.99 per month for six months, and after that $55.75 per month; NOT INCLUDING installation, HDTV,  DVR rental, etc.). So I guess Dish it is, but I'll still have about 90 channels I don't use.

Maybe I can sublet those channels? You know, find someone who really really likes home shopping and then "rent" my home shopping channels to them for a reduced price? And maybe I can find some really religious people and DONATE my religion channels to them, for the tax break?

 I'm just trying to think out of the box.